McCarthy’s Speaker Ambitions Suffer Blow as He Loses Three Votes

(Bloomberg) -- Kevin McCarthy saw his longtime ambition of becoming US House speaker slipping from his grasp after a humiliating showdown with a stubborn conservative minority that laid bare divisions among Republicans and foreshadowed legislative gridlock for the next two years.

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The 57-year-old California congressman and his allies worked to re-engage in negotiations overnight with the dissidents after the House abruptly adjourned Tuesday following three rounds of balloting in which McCarthy was unable to gain the majority needed to become speaker.

Lawmakers will reconvene at noon Wednesday for another attempt at electing a speaker. No other House business can be conducted, including swearing in new and returning members, until the election has been completed.

McCarthy’s back-to-back losses in dramatic roll call votes on the first day of the new Congress marked the first time since 1923 and only the second time since the Civil War that a House speaker wasn’t elected on the first ballot.

“The inability to do the easy stuff today sends bad signals for doing the hard stuff going forward,” said Doug Heye, a former senior Republican leadership aide. “It’s about more than any specific piece of legislation. It’s about whether governing is possible.”

Late Tuesday night, McCarthy said he had spoken to former President Donald Trump, who encouraged him to remain in the race and underscored his support. “At the end of the day, all this we go through will make us stronger in the long run,” McCarthy told reporters, vowing to not to drop out. He said he was weighing further concessions to opponents, including plum committee assignments.

Trump has backed McCarthy’s bid for the speakership, but in an interview with NBC News earlier Tuesday declined to say whether he still did. “I got everybody calling, wanting my support,” he said according to NBC. “But we’ll see what happens. We’ll see how it all works out.”

McCarthy, who was denied the speakership in 2015 when he was forced by conservatives to withdraw in favor of Paul Ryan, had already moved into the speaker’s office suite a few steps from the House floor. He vowed not to give up his quest.

“We stay in until we win,” he told a group of reporters as he walked off the House floor between votes. By mid-afternoon, that plan had changed and the chamber adjourned.

As the night wore on, food deliveries began arriving at Republican offices and meeting rooms. McCarthy holed up in another office off the House floor for hours making phone calls to try to gain more votes.

The protracted deadlock over who will lead the incoming Republican-controlled House flashed a warning of perils ahead for fulfilling such fundamental tasks as financing the government or honoring US debts.

Ideological divisions, personal grievances and an atmosphere of distrust flared among the new majority as the dissidents pressed their revolt, roiling what is typically a ceremonial elevation of the party leader to the constitutional post of House speaker.

Even if McCarthy ultimately prevails or a compromise candidate emerges, the new speaker will be weakened and dissidents emboldened, Heye said. A new rebellion could form any time the speaker forges a difficult compromise, using a parliamentary tactic to vacate the chair and again halt the chamber from further action.

“Who’s to say that’s not going to happen two days before a debt crisis?” said Heye, who was an aide to former Republican Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

A weakened speaker also would be an unreliable negotiating partner in dealings with the Democratic-controlled Senate and White House, complicating the resolution of key matters and injecting added uncertainty into any agreement among US political leaders.

Similar fractures among House Republicans frustrated efforts to negotiate an increase in the US debt ceiling 2011, bringing the nation to the brink of a default. The crisis triggered a downgrade of Treasury debt and a slide in the US stock market.

The US will again face a default later this year without congressional action to raise the legal debt limit. Hard-line conservatives among the Republican rebels also are demanding deep spending cuts anathema to Democrats, raising the possibility of a government shutdown once funding runs out at the end of the federal fiscal year on Sept. 30.

Future military aid to Ukraine also could hang in the balance, with House Republicans divided on maintaining support.

“The message that’s coming out of the House today is that we don’t know how to govern, and that’s not a good thing for our brand,” Mick Mulvaney a former Republican House member and former White House chief of staff to said Tuesday on Bloomberg Radio’s “Sound On.”

Kevin Smith, who was a communications director for former Speaker John Boehner, also a Republican, called Tuesday’s event, “pretty extraordinary.”

“Certainly a sign that a group of Republicans want to sow chaos and hold a GOP speaker hostage when it comes to the most basic functions of government,” Smith said.

McCarthy’s supporters insisted he would ultimately prevail.

Ultra-conservatives in the House assert that McCarthy hasn’t done enough over the years to stop Democratic-backed spending packages, though he led the overwhelming majority of House Republicans in opposing legislation supported by Senate Republican leaders that funded the government for the current year.

McCarthy also has shown an adaptability during his long tenure as a party leader — he rocketed to a post as Republican whip in 2010 just four years after entering Congress — that has sown distrust among conservatives.

It wasn’t clear what new concession McCarthy could offer the holdouts, who want rule changes to make it easier to topple a speaker, specific committee assignments and votes on a balanced budget and term limits for members of Congress.

“These people trying to take down McCarthy don’t think about five feet in front of them,” said Representative Dan Crenshaw, a Texas Republican who supports McCarthy.

On Tuesday night, one of McCarthy’s opponents, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, asked the Architect of the Capitol, J. Brett Blanton, in a letter why McCarthy had been allowed to move to the speaker’s office.

House Democrats were in no mood to help McCarthy. Former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who relinquished her leadership role after the midterm elections, said there was “no chance” that any Democrats provide McCarthy with votes or would sit out any votes to shrink the effective majority he needs.

--With assistance from Laura Litvan.

(Updates with McCarthy on Trump, Gaetz letter, starting in sixth paragraph.)

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